EATON — Preble County has recently seen success with the implementation of the Careers Connection Director position, which is filled by Harold Niehaus.
During the Educational Service Center (ESC) Board of Education meeting on Friday, Dec. 20, Assistant to the Superintendent Shawn Hoff shared an exciting success story, where they were able to get a student — whom never had any success with traditional education — connected to a career field and started on a successful path.
“We serviced a student years ago from one of our local districts. When he came to us, my statement to [his home] district was, his behaviors he’s exhibiting was because he’s bored. He’s extremely intelligent, he’s not being challenged. I was very open and honest saying, we’re going to struggle to challenge him,” Hoff said.
“We got him transitioned back to his home district. They kicked him out, he left, and he tried to enroll in home-education. He was facing a court appearance today, for non-enrollment, because they didn’t follow the guidelines for home-education. In the meantime, he came in here to request from me a letter that ODE said he needed to be able to get his GED.
“I got the letter out and sent it to ODE. In the meantime, I was talking to him and told him to talk to [Niehaus]. They sat down and had a conversation. [Harold Niehaus] told him to go to CTC and take the WorkKeys Assessment, he said, “Because [the student] did a whole business pitch to me in less than 15 minutes off the cuff – I’m sold on your business.’
“The student wanted to go to college for business experience to be an entrepreneur. [Harold Niehaus] said, ‘You’re bored with school, how are you going to handle these classes?’ He went to CTC and took the WorkKeys Assessment and blows it out of the water. He scored one point away from having the top platinum level national certification you can get.
“He came back, took his GED, and blew the GED test out of the water. We now have him lined up – he’s not in a home district, but he’s a student in Preble County – for an extended job shadowing opportunity with an engineer at Parker Hannifin to get into engineering. We’ve got him hooked up with Job and Family Services in their youth program that will remove some of those financial barriers to help him.
“This kid is seeming to be well on his way to one heck of a potential career. A kid that didn’t work well in a traditional school setting, but has been doing a lot of work on his own. Of course, we got court dismissed. This is a very unique situation, but something that Harold [Niehaus] and I are very proud of. You don’t hear about something like that very often.”
